Set up to provide a service that produces live concert recording CDs within minutes of an event finishing, the Abbey Road Live Here Now project is run by a team that includes Abbey Road Studios engineers. The recordings give fans the chance to take a souvenir recording from the concert straight either when it finishes or to downloaded it from the artist’s website afterwards.

Now, the team behind the recording and distribution of high-end concert CDs will use Avid’s Venue Profile live sound system to support the recording of live shows worldwide.

The Venue Profile made its debut for Faithless’ recent world tour, and the system has also been used on Eliza Doolittle’s Manchester and London concerts during April. For these selected tours, the team worked with location recording company DMZ Live, which provides the vehicles and equipment for the remote recording.

Given the time frame, there is no opportunity to edit or overdub ‘repairs’ to a recording: ‘We really do only have one shot at recording live concerts,’ says MJ, head of Abbey Road Live Here Now. ‘You can’t ask Faithless to repeat their last track because the feed broke up… So we needed a system that was 100 per cent reliable and produced brilliant sound. Sound quality is paramount when you’re selling a high-end product to fans.

‘The nature of our work also takes us around the world so we needed the desk to be portable – the Venue Profile system fulfilled all these requirements and more.’

During recording, the Madi feed passes through an optical cable into a Madi Option card fitted in the Venue desk. It’s then mixed in stereo and mastered on the desk, before being passed to real-time burners to create master CDs. The turnaround time for CDs is five minutes after the band’s encore has finished.

Avid reseller HD Pro Audio brokered the deal and Avid UK Live Sound Specialist James Baker was on hand to offer support and advice to DMZ Live and the Abbey Road Live Here Now team. ‘A week after purchasing the desk we were up and running,’ says MJ.